Review: How to Survive a Plague In 1987, 26-year-old Peter Staley, a closeted Wall Street trader, was diagnosed as HIV-positive. Given less than two years to live, he addressed the International AIDS Conference . . . three years later. He's still alive.

Sun Airway | Soft Fall One of the more remarkable evolutions in the contemporary musical underground may be Jon Barthmus's decade-long peregrination from hardcore punk to the ambitious electro-pop of Sun Airway.

Ash Borer | Ash Borer NorCal black-metal trio Ash Borer's debut full-length is as diminutive as their namesake (limited to a 150-cassette run) but no less destructive or striking as they hurtle through three tracks in 40 minutes.

Review: Littlerock Two young Japanese tourists, siblings Rintaro (Rintaro Sawamoto) and Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka), get stranded when their car breaks down in the California backwater of the title.

Cloud Nothings | Attack on Memory With Attack on Memory , the third full-length from Cleveland-based Cloud Nothings, 20-year-old frontman Dylan Baldi approaches new, drastically darker material with the same empty-bottle angst that made his previous releases so appealing.

Air | Le Voyage Dans La Lune It was inevitable that Air would one day be asked to soundtrack a colorized version of an iconic 1902 silent French film about moon exploration, right? There's the French thing, the moon thing, the kitsch-cool factor.

Dr. Dog | Be the Void With Be the Void , their sonically raw sixth album, these Philly psych-pop oddballs have pulled a fussy, self-conscious about-face, indulging in their weirdest ideas in years.